Let's Just Put Delaware State In The Big Ten

The November 20, 2010 game between Penn State and Indiana will switch locations from Indiana's campus in Bloomington, Indiana to [The Stadium Formerly Known As Jack Kent Cooke] in Landover, Maryland. [TSFKAJKC] is home of the NFL's Washington Redskins.

The stadium in question is about four hours from State College. It's eleven hours from Bloomington. Indiana just sold a home game for three million dollars. And Penn State got one for free.

This sort of thing has a long tradition in college football—Michigan State didn't play a home game in their series against Michigan until 1948 and didn't start equitable home and homes until a decade later—but died out at about the same time segregation did. And nobody wants to bring that back, hmmmm? [/sportstalkradio argument]

Let's stipulate that schools have the right to do whatever they want with their nonconference schedules. The effect on the rest of the conference is minimal there, mostly limited to "you scheduled who and they did what to you?" Feel free to insert your favorite recent humiliation there: The Horror, Iowa State, USC, Louisiana Tech, etc.

Once we start talking about conference schedules, though, people have a right to bitch. Every team is playing for a conference championship. The schedules need to be as equitable as possible. Yes, playing eight games against ten opponents naturally inserts some wobble in average schedule difficulty. Creating protected rivalries enhances that. (Would you rather be Michigan State (Penn State and Ohio State Michigan [ed: whoops lol] every year) or Purdue (Northwestern and Indiana).) But in both cases everyone has agreed to the potential imbalance and decided that the alternative—years without The Game or I-AA snackycakes—is worse.

Not so with Indiana's decision to sell a home game, which benefits exactly one team, has been approved by no one, and compromises the integrity of the league schedule. It also sets a dangerous precedent. No Big Ten team has been so craven since balanced schedules became commonplace. A rundown:

A few teams did so back in the stone age but not since. Michigan hasn't played a neutral site conference game since they lost to Northwestern 2-3 in 1925, and that was in Chicago. Illinois played home games against Ohio State in Cleveland in 1944 and 1942. Purdue did the same in 1943.

A few teams have moved games to neutral sites without giving up at least the appearance of a home game. Indiana played a neutral site game against Penn State in 2000 and against Illinois in 1984, both in Indianapolis. (They did sell a home game to Northwestern, also in 1925. Northwestern won 25-0, their only win of the season.) Ohio State moved a 1991 home game against Northwestern to Cleveland. Northwestern has a fair number of games listed as "@ Chicago, IL," which Evanston is basically a part of.

Aaaand there's one bizarre outlier I didn't remember: Wisconsin gave up a home game to play Michigan State in Tokyo in 1993.

That's it. No modern-era Big Ten team has ever agreed to move a conference game to a location almost three times closer to the road team than the "home" team. No one has ever moved a conference game out of state with the freakish exception of that Tokyo game. Even that game was a decidedly neutral site, which TSFKAJKC will most definitely not be in 2010.

The Big Ten should shoot this down, and do it soon. This is the I-A equivalent of forfeiting a conference game so you can get paid by Michigan. Insert some bylaw that says any attempt to move a conference home game out of state or to a point that's closer to the nominal road team than the home team must be approved by the league first, and look very sternly at the Indiana administration when you do.

Obviously I agree with you, Brian, but I'm pretty sure that the 1991 Northwestern-OSU game was a Northwestern home game. I've read that elsewhere today, and a quick look at the series history shows the Cleveland game sandwiched between two trips to Columbus.

That changes nothing, of course. The only precedents I can find are that OSU-NU game and a Duke home game played in Orlando against FSU. I have no illusions about IU's place in the football world, but I would hope that our AD would aspire to be somewhere ahead of Duke and pre-Barnett Northwestern.

Excellent analysis. Let me offer one more thougt. This is much more than a cheering section boost for the one game. This also gives Penn State a huge recruiting boost in the Mid-Atlantic region. The State of Maryland has many top prospects and Penn State regularly nabs some of the best (e.g.,Derrick Williams). This development promises to push their recruitment successes even higher. Illinois fans can't be happy with this development--the DC area has been good to the Illini (e.g., Arrelious Benn from Dunbar High).

I would contend that it does. People place a pretty high value on bowl appearances and their positive impact upon a team's ability to recruit, and a team can only play one of those per year. Obviously, the fact that a program is good enough to get a bowl bid is a bigger draw than the bowl itself, but I can't tell you how many times I heard last year that Michigan's recruiting would suffer as the bowl streak ended--not because the team was bad, but because it was one fewer opportunity to see Michigan football in action. Consider all of the DC area players that go to Penn State. Most of them don't watch Penn State football on a regular basis; it's conceivable that some of them haven't seen a single game featuring Penn State. This game provides not only an opportunity to watch them on local TV or hear the game on the radio, but--assuming the player in question is highly sought by the Penn State coaching staff--actually attend the game in person. I think that would leave an indelible impression upon that kid.

Such a huge difference between Indiana putting a game in Indianapolis (which is still IU territory, big time) or Northwestern possibly moving a conference game to Wrigley (an easy El ride from campus and no more likely to be loaded with Illinois/Michigan/Wisconsin/etc fans than the games in Evanston already are), and moving one that far away to an area closer to your opponent. Delany has to veto this. Unbelievable.

Oh, and MSU doesn't have protected games against OSU, it's with us, obviously. OSU is off their schedule this year I believe.

Wow, this is a very bizarre turn of events. I'm interested to hear Jamiemac's take on this. Anyway, I totally agree that this should not be something that occurs frequently (or even sparingly, for that matter). This is the type of thing that a league commissioner exists for. Squash this type of thing now before it becomes as rampant as scheduling FCS teams.

Also, I wonder what the attendance of an MSU-Wisconsin game in Tokyo could be. Those teams don't have a lot of fans outside of their own states, let alone continents.

As an IU alum, I am too busy counting greenbacks this morning. We need to pay for a basketball resurrection, after all, so moving a game in a non revenue sport is not that big of a deal. Especially for three mill!

Also: What division of the newly aligned Big 10 will Delaware State play in? Hopefully the Hoosiers.

Can I ask you how you think IU fans will react to this? I assume that IU doesn't have the football fan base that Michigan has, but isn't there a group of people who buy tickets and support the team year after year? Wont those fans feel that thay are being pissed on by their own AD?

"Anthony Thompson is not walking through that door! Antwan Randle-El is not walking through that door! Um, uh, Adewale Ogunleye is not walking through that door! And uh, um... ah fuck it, we've run out of players anyone's heard of."

In 1996, Maryland played its conference home game against Florida State in Miami. They were trounced 48 - 10. Florida State went undefeated that year until losing to National Champion Florida in a rematch of their regular season finale.

Obviously this is a patently ridiculous move by IU, but not quite as bad as what Delaware State did. IU just did something that other teams have already done, and took it to a little bit more of an extreme. DSU essentially told their conference to fuck off, that they'd rather sell out for a few hundred thousand bucks than play a conference game and if they have to take an automatic loss, so be it.

Both are saying money is more important than the competition, but IU merely gave up a competitive advantage. DSU flat didn't care what happened to their actual tangible for-real record as long as they got paid for it.

Agreed. It doesn't give me a warm-fuzzy about the way the admin is handling things. Obviously they had to know about DSU's conference schedule, and they likely cajoled DSU into playing the game anyway. I don't like anything about that game, other than that we'll probably get a win.

Living in DC since 1997 I am surrounded by PSU fans. Redskin fans complain that Fedex is like a steelers home game. It will be way worse for IU. I guess I will don my red cap (oh wait I don't own anything red) and go support IU.

This is exactly the kind of "selling out" I hate, whether for cash or for success. There is a right way and a wrong way to do things, and this is def. the "wrong way."

One question: could this have any impact on the two teams actual record in 2010? My guess is "no," but I'm not sure. Were a team that actually could conceivably beat PSU in a home game to do this, it would be much worse.

There is no way anyone in the football program at IU would have agreed to this. Build a nice new stadium expansion, then have only three Big Ten home games in 2010?

Crimson Quarry makes the point that, in the last four games in this series, IU's margin of defeat in Happy Valley was 36 points. In Bloomington it was less than 5 points. For Michigan, this essentially guarantees a win for a conference contender. If Penn State finishes a game above Michigan in 2010 because of a victory over Indiana, and thereby gets to a better bowl, bear this in mind.

Notre Dame playing in Ireland makes historical sense though -- they long enjoyed massive fan support in the American Irish community from way back in the day, and hell, Irish is their nickname. I mean, if Florida wanted to play a game in Jortsistan, it'd be hard to fault them either.

Notre Dame isn't in a conference, so the whole validity of "keeping a balance in the conference schedule" argument goes out the window with them. So basically, the irish can play where ever they want, because they're an OOC game for every one they play. What IU is doing here is vastly different. Its a conference game.

it appears that 1979 was the only game that was sold, resulting in a 5th home Big Ten game. In the other years you cite, Michigan played 4 away games in conference. The benefit of having a fifth conference home game is real. There is no real benefit of playing one of your 4 conference home games against NU (during the late 70's early 80's as NU was possibly the worst college football team in history at that moment in history).

To level the playing field and to prevent windfalls from arrangements such as this one, why doesn't Indiana just eliminate its football program. Why doesn't Penn State eliminate its basketball program, or rejoin the A10.

Indiana obviously does not care about football and Penn State doesn't care about basketball. Why must we have a system where they're forced to maintain a farce program, but share in the hard earned proceeds from other conference schools? Yes even with the sharing they probably lose money on these sports, but the real victims here are the schools who must share the revenue their teams worked hard to obtain.

1) Penn St won more games than UMich in the Big Ten last year, they also won the NIT. They are a program on the rise. Regardless of attendance or interest from Penn St., of which there is some, and considering the size of campus, it will grow, Penn State's basketball program should not be eliminated.

2) The Big Ten is quite old, academically linked, and loyal.

3) Indiana is a soccer power, traditionally strong in tennis, baseball, and swimming.

then. The series was off in 1973 and 1974. From 1975 (at UM) through 1984 (also at UM), UM was at home 7 times, NU 3 times.

But in 1980 UM played 4 home (NU, MSU, Ill, PU) and 4 away (Minn, IU, Wisc, OSU) conference games, not the 5-3 that you would expect. Same for the previous years 1975-1979. So I don't know how UM had 4 home/2 away games against NU but still have 4H and 4A every year during the same stretch.

But from 1981-1984, UM played 9 conference games each year, but only once (1981) did UM have 4 home games and 5 away; the other 3 times they had 5 home and 4 away. During this stretch, NU played 3 times at UM, once at NU, so UM must have "purchased" one of these games from NU.

But since it was a 5-4 (or 4-5) split for each of the 4 seasons, the effect is not as great as Brian is taking issue with, as PSU now has an effective 5-3 split.

Edit: I was wrong and can't count. In 1979 UM had 5 home conference games and 3 away games.

INDIANAPOLIS has an NFL stadium closer to Bloomington
DETROIT has an NFL stadium closer to Bloomington
CINCINNATI has an NFL stadium closer to Bloomington
CLEVELAND has an NFL stadium closer to Bloomington
PITTSBURGH has an NFL stadium closer to Bloomington
BUFFALO has an NFL stadium closer to Bloomington
CHICAGO has an NFL stadium closer to Bloomington
ST.LOUIS has an NFL stadium closer to Bloomington
KANSAS CITY has an NFL stadium closer to Bloomington
GREEN BAY has an NFL stadium closer to Bloomington
MINNEAPOLIS has an NFL stadium closer to Bloomington
NASHVILLE has an NFL stadium closer to Bloomington
ATLANTA has an NFL stadium closer to Bloomington
CHARLOTTE has an NFL stadium closer to Bloomington
Yes, even BALTIMORE has an NFL stadium closer to Bloomington (by 4 miles)

That's 15 NFL Stadiums closer to Bloomington IN than FedEx Field in Landover MD.

Thanks to common sense and Google Maps, the preceding facts lead to an obvious question about scheduling this game in Landover MD ...